Christmas Lectures

The CSIC takes the opportunity of the leisure days of the Christmas holidays to carry out an outreach activity for the whole family. In Ciencia en Navidad researchers try to bring closer complex topics, such as the quantum physics to optics of light, to a non-specialist public of all ages.

Edition 2018

The CSIC took the opportunity of the leisure days of the Christmas holidays to carry out an outreach activity for the whole family: “Robots, humanos... y Michael Jackson”. In its fifth edition, the researcher Elena García Armada from the Centro de Automática y Robótica (CSIC-UPM) explained to more than 300 people that the age of robots serving humankind has come. To do this, she introduced the humanoid robot NAO to the audience at CSIC’s central headquarters.

Edition 2017

On this occasion, under the title “2017: una odisea llegar hasta aquí”, humor, spectacle and astrobiology appeared together in a show that took place on 22 December at the conference hall of CSIC’s central headquarters (C/ Serrano, 117). There, the molecular biologist Óscar Huertas, along with the electronic engineer Miguel Abril, the astrophysicist Manuel González and the researcher and scientific broadcaster Emilio García – these last three from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IIA-CSIC) – realised hilarious dialogues about the origin lo life in the universe. During the show, assistants even received the visit of two aliens sent to earth with the mission of exterminating humankind. “2017: una odisea llegar hasta aquí” was awarded with the first prize of the I International Contest Ciencia en acción 2016.

Edition 2016

For the third year running at the start of the Christmas holiday, Ciencia en Navidad offered alternative leisure activities. Assistants had the opportunity of learning about science with the microorganisms that inhabit us and experimenting what they learned in the palms of their own hands. With the theatre play ¡Qué trabajo tan curioso! ¿Conoces los microorganismos que llevas puestos? Marta López, microbiologist, and Luisa Martín, scientific communicator from the Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas (IIM) del CSIC, did a funny approach to the world of research in microbiology; where it is possible to know what eyes cannot see although it is there and interacts with us.

Edition 2015

With the title ¡Nos han robado la luz! Viaja en el tiempo con nosotr@s para recuperarla, in the second edition of Ciencia en Navidad, that took place on 22th December, a group of researchers of the CSIC’s Instituto de Óptica invited us to travel to different periods, from Ancient Greece to the future, to recover light and comprehend its properties.

Edition 2014

The first edition of Ciencia en Navidad, organised on 22 December 2014, had a massive attendance that exceeded the capacity of the conference hall at CSIC’s central headquarters. More than 400 people of all ages attended to the interactive talk “¿Qué tienen que ver los gatos con el Bosón de Higgs?”, by Ángel Sanz, researcher at CSIC’s Instituto de Física Fundamental. The scientist deciphered through demonstrations and experiments some of the key points of the quantic world in a session in which participated many of the youngest attendants.

Ciencia en Navidad is inspired in Christmas Lectures® by the self-taught physicist Michael Faraday, who at Christmas in 1825 launched this series of annual conferences at the Royal Institution in London that consisted in presenting and explaining the advances in different scientific fields of that times to a great audience. Except for the interruption of four editions due to the bombing in London during the II World War, this tradition has been maintained over time until now.